'Titanic' trivia and fun facts
The great controversy in film history
Since its release, one question has been formulated time after time by the audience after watching 'Titanic': could Jack survive if he had gotten on the floating door alongside Rose? Was there no space for both of them? In the hopes of ending this discussion, director James Cameron conducted a rigorous scientific study. He concluded that Jack could have survived if he had gotten onto the door and had kept the upper part of his body out of the water.
37 accurate seconds
The collision with the iceberg reportedly lasted 37 seconds, which is how long the collision scene is in the movie.
A single song that resumes the score
James Cameron didn't want to include any songs in the film. Still, composer James Horner secretly teamed up with Will Jennings and Céline Dion to make 'My Heart Will Go On', which captivated Cameron that it ended up in the film's credits and won the Academy Award for Best Original Song.
The whole of 1912 lasts as long as the Titanic to sink
All scenes set in 1912 have a total length of two hours and forty minutes, exactly the time it took the Titanic to sink.
The couple that truly existed
The elderly couple seen hugging on the bed while water floods their room was Rosalie Ida Straus and Isidor Straus, the owners of Macy's department store in New York, who both died on the Titanic. Ida was offered a seat on a lifeboat but refused so that she could stay with her husband, saying, "As we have lived together, so we shall die together." A filmed scene depicted this moment but was cut from the final version. Mrs. Straus initially said, "Where you go, I go" that inspired Rose's same line in the film.
An honest mistake that Cameron loved
When Jack is preparing to draw Rose, he says to her, "Over on the bed...the couch." The line was written in the script as "Lie on that couch", but actor Leonardo DiCaprio made an honest mistake, and James Cameron liked it so much he kept it in.
One shot
In the scene where the water crashes into the Grand Staircase room, the filmmakers only had one shot to film it because the entire set and furnishings were going to be destroyed.